{"id":327259,"date":"2026-08-22T07:02:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/327259\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T07:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:02:28","slug":"roger-marshall-ty-masterson-quiver-in-fear-as-kan-faces-its-greatest-threat-ever-drag-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/327259\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Marshall, Ty Masterson quiver in fear as Kan. faces its greatest threat ever: drag queens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Home<\/a> \u00bb Perspective<\/a> \u00bb Roger Marshall, Ty Masterson quiver in fear as Kan. faces its greatest threat ever: drag queens<\/p>\n

Both U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall and Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson present themselves to the public as square-jawed manly men, red-blooded conservative Republicans who love the Second Amendment, juicy steaks and gargantuan American flags in equal measure.<\/p>\n

They command the landscape. Nothing scares them.<\/p>\n

Well, nothing except drag queens.<\/p>\n

Then the candidates for U.S. Senate and Kansas governor shriek like little girls, flail their hands in panic and beat a hasty retreat behind the nearest piece of overstuffed furniture. Who knows what that drag queen might do to them. If their recent social media posts are any indication, Marshall and Masterson fear they\u2019ll be read to.<\/p>\n

We all know that reading\u00a0leads to learning<\/a>. Both men apparently want to avoid that at all costs.<\/p>\n

From the evidence of the recent campaign kickoff photo Marshall posted on Facebook, Kansas Reflector attracts a much more robust turnout for our events across the state. But then, we also welcome\u00a0all members of the public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also public: Drag shows. They\u2019re not difficult to find, and they offer good value for money.<\/p>\n

Just to underscore the point: Kansas Reflector staff and drag queens both draw bigger crowds than Marshall, and are braver besides. Perhaps if the senator spent more time in the state, he would draw bigger crowds. It\u2019s worth a shot for a campaign that has otherwise\u00a0adopted Torquemada\u2019s tactics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for drag queen story hours specifically, I have no idea what Marshall means. I\u2019m a gay man married to another man,\u00a0we have a child<\/a>, and I\u2019ve never been to a drag queen story hour, sought one out, or even known of one near me.<\/p>\n

Perhaps drag queens are just following Marshall around to read him U.S. Senate\u00a0residency<\/a> requirements<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s joined in gay panic by Masterson, who hasn\u2019t hesitated during his time in Topeka to terrorize the LGBTQ+ community for fundamentalist fun and political profit.<\/p>\n

The important thing to understand is that Masterson\u2019s smear of state Sen. Cindy Holscher, the Democratic nominee for governor, doesn\u2019t come from the Kansas press. A story about a Holscher social media comment from 2023 was spread through the\u00a0cable network Newsmax<\/a>\u00a0(the same network that paid \u00a0$67 million to\u00a0settle a defamation lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0from Dominion Voting Systems) and the Washington Examiner<\/a>\u00a0(motto:\u00a0We\u2019re also a newspaper in Washington, D.C.).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of cherrypicked statement intended to provoke righteous fury in conservatives and questions in self-professed moderates. It\u2019s meant to make people so angry they can\u2019t think rationally.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re feeling that way, please put this column aside and take a couple of minutes to calm down. I can wait.<\/p>\n

Better? Now you\u2019re ready for the craziest part of this story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that Holscher mentioned Jesus\u2019 sexual orientation. It\u2019s this:\u00a0Ty Masterson killed the bill she was criticizing.\u00a0He didn\u2019t support it either!<\/p>\n

You can read the\u00a0proposed legislation here<\/a>. Senate Bill 149 \u201cexpand(ed) the crime of promoting obscenity to minors to include drag performances.\u201d The legislative history page shows that it\u00a0died in committee<\/a>, meaning Masterson, as Senate president, didn\u2019t want to waste time on culture war toxic waste that would have been tossed out by judges as a clear First Amendment violation.<\/p>\n

But now that the campaign season has begun, Masterson can claim to support bills he smothered in the cradle. Because, as we remember, drag queens are the scariest bogeymen of all.<\/p>\n

Or as the Memes of Wichita Facebook page puts it: \u201cYou may not like that I give data centers tax breaks. But I believe in my heart that Jesus was a straight man.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we come down the stretch toward the November elections, Masterson and Marshall might want to take a deep breath and think about their actions.<\/p>\n

Both men\u2019s comical fixation on drag queens \u2014 their barely suppressed horror \u2014 underscores a broader panic about gay people. They appear not to understand that\u00a0drag queens are simply<\/a>\u00a0men dressed as women. They could be straight men. They might even be women dressed up especially fantastically (not for nothing was\u00a0Dolly Parton a guest<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race\u201d).<\/p>\n

Gay men, lesbian women, bisexual people, trans folks and an array of associated others have come out of the closet and now live honestly across the U.S. and Kansas. They live as their authentic selves. The broader public welcomes and supports them doing so, with a handful<\/a>\u00a0of politically hyperbolic exceptions.<\/p>\n

While Marshall\u2019s and Masterson\u2019s teams no doubt think they can avoid blowback by casting their criticism toward the fringes, anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear can understand their goals.<\/p>\n

They want to exploit fear of the other. They want to turn Kansans against their gay friends and neighbors. They want to force good people back into lives of secrecy and shame.<\/p>\n

They want the rest of us to act as afraid as they do.<\/p>\n

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article is republished under a Creative Commons license. See original article.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Free Speech Center newsletter offers a digest of First Amendment and news-media news every other week. Subscribe for free here:\u00a0https:\/\/bit.ly\/3kG9uiJ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home \u00bb Perspective \u00bb Roger Marshall, Ty Masterson quiver in fear as Kan. faces its greatest threat ever:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-327259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}